After five years in the shrine’s classroom learning basic recitations, dances, and invocations, Caelym is impatient to move on to the next level of his training, convinced that by learning to perform the cult’s complex rituals he will win the attention and approval of the dashing and charismatic priest who’d acted for the sun-god in the summer solstice ceremony at which he was conceived eleven years and nine months earlier.
It was a week before the summer solstice and sunlight was streaming through Caelym’s bedroom window. He pulled his blanket over his face to block out the glare as well as the sight of the servant who was standing by his bed holding out his robes like he was a stupid baby who couldn’t get dressed by himself.
“I’m not a baby!” was what he’d said the day before when Herrwn told him that he was going to have to lead the children’s games at the coming festivities, even though he’d argued that he was too old to wear a pretend-crown of stupid pink flowers and recite the same stupid poem he had to say every year, and then play a stupid little flute while the children of laborers and servants went hopping and skipping around him. But Herrwn had just said, “None of us are ever too old to honor the Goddess,” and had gone on to tell him how Mirthwendar, the first-born son of the Great Mother Goddess, had danced with his three mortal brides, wearing the crown they’d woven for him out of flowers that had sprouted up wherever his feet touched the ground, and that was why, every year on the morning of the summer solstice, three of their high priestesses gathered flowers and wove them into the festival crown—a story that Caelym had heard a thousand times and could have recited in his sleep.
When Herrwn wouldn’t listen to him, Caelym tried to get Olyrrwd to say that he couldn’t be in the village festival because he needed to work in the healing chamber, but Olyrrwd had laughed and said not everyone was lucky enough to have priestesses gathering flowers for them.
Irritated and out of sorts, Caelym got up and put on his robes, wishing that something—anything—would save him from having to wear those stupid pink flowers on his head. It was a wish he would regret for the rest of his life
Hearing Rhedwyn’s call for all of the strong and courageous men of Llwddawanden to follow him, Caelym joined the throng of would-be warriors gathering in the shrine’s central courtyard.
Three days later, when word came that the Saxon king who ruled the lands below the ridges that hid their secret valley had sent his soldiers to attack a peaceful village that was loyal to their shrine, preparations for the solstice celebration stopped as Rhedwyn, who was their high priestess’s consort and—in Caelym’s mind, practically a god—rallied the men of fighting age to avenge this assault on the Goddess.
Hearing Rhedwyn’s call for all of the strong and courageous men of Llwddawanden to follow him, Caelym joined the throng of would-be warriors in the shrine’s central courtyard, only to be caught by Herrwn and forced to return to his classroom to recite stories about past heroes instead of getting to be a hero himself. Not willing to be left behind, he watched for his chance to get away, and when it came, he grabbed a ceremonial dagger that was long enough to be a sword and a basin that he could wear for a helmet and climbed out of the window like he’d done before when he’d gone on pretend-adventures.
It was too late to catch up with Rhedwyn’s men, who had already passed through the main gate, but Caelym knew there was a secret underground passage out of the valley and he ran for it. As he came out of the tunnel, he could hear the sounds of pipes and horns and struck out in their direction. Coming up a rise, he was just in time to see the warband, half of the men mounted and the rest on foot, charging over the edge of a ridge top,
He would have dashed after them but Rhedwyn’s brother, Labhruinn, who Caelym had always thought was his friend, grabbed his arm, took his dagger away, and shouted at him to go back to the shrine.
While they were arguing, the battle cries turned to screams of pain and there was a thunder of horses coming up the hill—their riders calling out in a strange language. Labhruinn gripped Caelym’s arm tighter and pulled him into a briar patch, holding him down and covering his mouth while the enemies charged to and fro before riding back down the side of the hill. There were no sounds of battle after that, just harsh whoops and laughter as smoke smelling like roasting meat wafted up from the valley below.
At first, Caelym struggled, trying to get his knife back and run down the hill, but finally he gave in and let himself be pulled farther back through the brambles into a tiny clearing where he and Labhruinn huddled together until it was starting to get dark and they hadn’t heard anything for a long time.
. . .there was a rustling in the brambles and Labhruinn crawled back in, dragging Rhedwyn’s body—at least Caelym thought it must be Rhedwyn’s body because its charred clothes were the same clothes Rhedwyn had been wearing and some of its face still looked like Rhedwyn’s.
“Stay here! Don’t move!” Labhruinn whispered, so Caelym waited alone until there was a rustling in the brambles and Labhruinn crawled back in, dragging Rhedwyn’s body—at least Caelym thought it must be Rhedwyn’s body because its charred clothes were the same clothes Rhedwyn had been wearing and some of its face still looked like Rhedwyn’s.
Labhruinn took off his cloak and tucked it in around Rhedwyn, and he told Caelym to pick flowers from the edge of the little clearing. While Caelym was getting the flowers, Labhruinn used a sharp rock to scrape a long, narrow hole, lifted Rhedwyn into it, and put Caelym’s ceremonial dagger on his chest. Then they both put the flowers on him and covered him up. Then Labhruinn said they had to go back to the shrine and tell people what happened.
Caelym was always sure he remembered that much clearly. It was after he got back to the classroom and Olyrrwd gave him something bitter to drink that his memories got hazy and were mostly about waking up from bad dreams and having Olyrrwd give him another bitter-tasting draught.
One of those dreams was so vivid that he never forgot it. He was in the healing chamber stirring a vat that was almost as big as he was when Rhedwyn came in shot full of arrows, and said, “I need to be healed.” Olyrrwd pulled out all the arrows and Caelym brought a cup of the potion from his vat and gave it to Olyrrwd who told Rhedwyn to drink it, but the steaming liquid poured out through the arrow holes, and instead of being healed, Rhedwyn fell down dead.
Caelym’s regular memories started up after Olyrrwd stopped giving him the bitter potion, but even then they didn’t work right. For one thing, when Herrwn would teach him a story or a song, it would seem easy, but when he’d try to say or sing what he’d just heard, the words would get mixed up and come out all wrong. It was the same with dances. Herrwn would, very slowly and very carefully, show him the steps to do and he would understand how to do them in his head, but his feet wouldn’t do what they were supposed to, and he’d stumble and sometimes trip and fall. The other thing was that, while he very clearly remembered Labhruinn, no one else did.
He was lying awake one night, puzzling over why Labhruinn wasn’t there anymore and why he was the only one who remembered him, when he overheard Herrwn and Olyrrwd talking—saying that he couldn’t be in the autumn equinox ceremony, just because he forgot a few stupid poems.
The next morning Caelym put everything else out of his mind as Herron began his lesson by saying, “It is on the night of the autumn equinox that the curtain separating the living world from the realm of the spirits is at its thinnest, so thin that if the sacred rituals are carried out precisely—each of the twelve evocations is chanted without a single mistake, each of the twelve dances is performed with no one missing a single step, and each of the twelve accompanying songs is sung faultlessly—then, and only then, the spirits from the other side may pass through and join in the celebration.”
Afire with determination, Caelym spent the next two months chanting the chants, dancing the dances, and learning every word of every evocation so that he was ready to join the line of priests and priestesses as they filed out of the shrine’s great hall at twilight on the night of the fall equinox.
It is on the night of the autumn equinox that the curtain separating the living world from the realm of the spirits is at its thinnest, so thin that if the sacred rituals are carried out precisely. . . .the spirits from the other side may pass through and join in the celebration.
It was Caelym’s first high ritual and his first journey through the long labyrinth of tunnels that led to the Hall of Distant Voices, a vast cavern where the rustle of drafts from the depths of even deeper caves and the soft murmuring of unseen streams joined with the flutter of bats overhead in what sounded like a whispered conversation.
As they came into the great underground chamber, the line split—the priestesses moving to left and the priests to the right with the shadows cast by their torches dancing on the walls behind them. Then, suddenly, a dark figure broke out of the men’s line. It was Ossiam, their oracle, dancing wildly by himself. The others fell silent, coming to a halt and forming a ring around him.
Ossiam spent most of his time in seclusion at the top of the shrine’s highest tower, so Caelym had not seen much of him since their first unhappy encounter five years earlier. Now he stared, spellbound, as the oracle gave a spectacular flourish with his staff and dropped fainting to the floor
Two minor priests sprang out of the men’s line in time to break his fall and catch his torch and staff. After they lifted his head and gave him a swallow from a small silver flask, Ossiam let out an eerie moan and rose, slowly, awkwardly, as if he were being lifted by some outside force. Once upright, he began to swirl and sway, pointing into the shadows as he called out in a high, shrill voice, “Look there! They have come! See how they move among you! See how they beckon! See how they reach out their hands to you!”
Olyrrwd, standing next to Caelym, muttered, “See how only he can see them,” but Caelym barely heard him through the din of Ossiam’s cries echoing from one corner of the cavern to the other. He was craning his neck, trying to make out which of the shifting shadows were actually ghosts when Ossiam pointed at a spot to the right of where Caelym was looking, and hissed, “He is there!
Almost sure he saw the fleeting shape of something, Caelym would have missed the cue as the dance started up again if Herrwn hadn’t pulled him back into the line and muttered the opening lines of the accompanying song in his ear. Fortunately it began slowly—letting him get his feet moving and his steps in unison with his teacher’s, before its tempo gained speed, going faster and faster, becoming an ecstatic cyclone of circling forms—solid figures and shadows indistinguishable from each other. Caelym lost sight of Ossiam in the tumult, catching just a glimpse of the oracle’s staff at the head of the line as they dropped gradually back down to a solemn, steady drone, chanting their final chants and dancing a long, slow, steady dance out of the cavern and back up the passage way into the first light of dawn.
Even after they reached the shrine and the rest of the priests and priestesses went their separate ways, Olyrrwd would not let go of Caelym’s hand, pulling him through the corridors back to their sleeping quarters. All the way there, Caelym kept asking, “Who did Ossiam see?” To which Olyrrwd would only say, “Nothing! He saw nothing! Now go to bed!”
While Caelym did as he was told, he did so dragging his feet and looking back over his shoulder towards the stairs that led up to the oracle’s tower.
The only light in the room was from the open window where Ossiam was standing, a silhouette against the pale blue sky. His back was to the door and he didn’t turn around as he said, “You have come at last.”
Waiting long enough for Herron and Olyrrwd to fall asleep, Caelym slipped out from under his covers. Pulled by some invisible cord, he crept out of the bedroom, through the deserted hallways, and up the spiraling stairway to the closed door at the top of the oracle’s tower. He knocked. No one answered, but instead of turning back and going down the way he came, Caelym lifted the latch and looked in. The only light in the room was from the open window where Ossiam was standing, a silhouette against the pale blue sky. His back was to the door and he didn’t turn around as he said, “You have come at last!”
With that, the oracle took up his staff and swept past Caelym, striding down the stairs and off through the corridors. Caelym rushed after him, following him out of the shrine and up a rocky path that got steeper and more precarious the higher it went, finally coming to an end at the ledge of a cliff overlooking a deep gorge. On the far side, a torrent of water fell straight down into a mist that swirled up from the bottom of the crevasse, like steam rising from a boiling caldron. Ossiam strode to the edge of the abyss and swirled around, his robes bellowing in the wind.
“Listen!”
Caelym listened. He heard the wind rushing around him, the thundering of the water as it plunged downward, the cry of a hawk overhead.
Ossiam pulled his silver flask out from the fold of his robes and took a single swallow. His eyes rolled up so that they were almost all white, and he swayed as if he was going to faint and fall backwards into the gorge, only he stayed upright and spoke in a strange voice that seemed to be coming not from his mouth, which was barely open, but from out of the mist behind him—it was high and shrill, almost a woman’s voice:
“There is someone who speaks to you.”
“Who is it?”
“The one called Rhedwyn.”
I can't hear him! What is he saying?
Instead of answering, Ossiam drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again his pupils were back where they belonged and when he spoke his voice was his own—harsh, cold, and commanding.
“What did you hear?”
Bewildered, Caelym stammered, “I —I heard you say—” but before he could finish, Ossiam put up his hand, his palm out and his fingers spread apart, startling Caelym so that he stepped away, catching his heel on a root and falling flat on his back. Ossiam stepped forward, standing over him.
“I? I did not speak!”
“You—you did! You said—”
“The voice you heard, what did it sound like?”
“It was high, like a woman’s.”
“It was she, then, she who speaks through me! What did she say?”
“You. . .she. . . said Rhedwyn was speaking to me, but I didn’t hear anything, just the wind and the water and a bird.”
“Just the wind and the water and a bird.” Ossiam said it over three times, each time louder than the last. Then in a voice that seemed close to despair, he sighed, “He spoke to you and you heard nothing! Alas that you have not learned to listen to the voices that call to you from the other world!” He covered his face with his hands as though he were weeping, but when he lowered his hands his eyes were dry.
“Now tell me what you want!”
Rising up on his elbows, Caelym gasped, “I want to be an oracle like you!”
“Do you dare? Have you the courage? The study of divination is not for those afraid of seeking answers beyond the reach of ordinary minds. Will you forswear the manacles of reason and the deception of your senses? Believe only what I tell you to believe? Obey my every command? Heed no teacher but me? Decide now!”
There was no decision to make. Caelym already knew that Herron’s tales of heroic victories were just stories and that Olyrrwd couldn’t heal people who were dead. Rolling over from his back to his knees, he swore his oath to obey Ossiam's every command and passed his first test by not speaking to either Herron or Olyrrwd when he went to gather up his bedding and his robes.
Author’s Note: While the books in The Druid Chronicles are available at all major book sellers, I encourage readers to patronize their local book store or, if unavailable there, to consider purchase through Bookshop.org.
Credits: Photo by Cassie Boca on Unsplash
Greatly enjoyed this story.